TOOT BOOT posted:

Whatever happened to being able to tell a nerd story in a couple pages? A lot of the old great science fiction stories are over and done with in 10 pages or less

Now everyone thinks their vision is so grand they need a thousand pages to tell it

ahhh spiders posted:

Raymond Chandler v. Science Fiction

6005 Camino de la Costa
La Jolla, California

Mar 14 1953

Dear Swanie:

Playback is getting a bit tired. I have 36,000 words of doodling and not yet a stiff. That is terrible. I am suffering from a very uncommon disease called (by me) atrophy of the inventive powers. I can write like a streak but I bore myself. That being so, I could hardly fail to bore others worse. I can't help thinking of that beautiful piece of Sid Perelman's entitled "I'm Sorry I Made Me Cry."

Did you ever read what they call Science Fiction? It's a scream. It is written like this: "I checked out with K19 on Aldabaran III, and stepped out through the crummalite hatch on my 22 Model Sirus Hardtop. I cocked the timejector in secondary and waded through the bright blue manda grass. My breath froze into pink pretzels. I flicked on the heat bars and the Brylls ran swiftly on five legs using their other two to send out crylon vibrations. The pressure was almost unbearable, but I caught the range on my wrist computer through the transparent cysicites. I pressed the trigger. The thin violet glow was icecold against the rust-colored mountains. The Brylls shrank to half an inch long and I worked fast stepping on them with the poltex. But it wasn't enough. The sudden brightness swung me around and the Fourth Moon had already risen. I had exactly four seconds to hot up the disintegrator and Google had told me it wasn't enough. He was right."

They pay brisk money for this crap?

Ray

fork bomb posted:

Raymond Chandler owns so loving much

his Philip Marlow novels are some of my favorite reading, the character is such a sarcastic badass. everyone should check them out

Amethyst posted:

the difference is that tron was never a respected ip. or a quality ip.

TOOT BOOT posted:

Whatever happened to being able to tell a nerd story in a couple pages? A lot of the old great science fiction stories are over and done with in 10 pages or less

Now everyone thinks their vision is so grand they need a thousand pages to tell it

ahhh spiders posted:

put more writing in games to the detriment of gameplay and take more writing out of movies to the detriment of story (what movies try to tell)

Heresiarch posted:

It's possible to have good writing in games, it's just hard to find people who can do it right, because most of them seem to be trying to write movie screenplays instead. It's a completely different thing.

I just finished Bastion and the writing in it is pretty awesome. I'm doing a New Game+ and there's lots of little things in the narration that I'm picking up on now that I didn't get the first time through.

Also if you haven't played Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery then you really need to fix that. (You have about two days left.)

quote:

This isn't directed at you so much, Vadim, as in general...some
days I wonder what the hell I'm doing on the nets. We busted our butts
to get year 5, same as we do every year (though moreso this year),
because it would be *the most satisfactory way to end the story*. It
*could* end in year 4, I was prepared to do that if necessary, but it
wouldn't be as satisfactory to all concerned as year 5. So now we have
year five. And right out of the woodwork come people -- such as a
particularly twit-like message forwarded to me from one of the usenet
groups -- saying that the fifth season was going to be just filler now,
that the story was over, used up, it's all tied up, there's nothing but
"dumb old personal stories." No more arc.

And I would love nothing more than to just thump them.

I sometimes wonder if they think I was walking down the street
one day, and I came across this Arc laying in the road. And it's a
finite package, and once it's used up, it's used up. People, I THOUGHT
THIS STUFF UP. You watch it, but I make it...and I'm not doing this
for my health, I didn't fight this hard to do a season of filler.
Where's the common sense here? My vested interest in making this a
solid story is a hell of a lot higher than ANY viewer could POSSIBLY
bring to the table. But again and again, not to you Vadim but in
general, it's "Oh, it's all done now, it's just filler."

Yes, I fought and bled to get a season 5 so I could do filler,
instead of going back to a network show where they'll pay me double
what I get on B5. Absolutely. That makes a LOT of sense.

I dunno...maybe I'm over-reacting...hell, I probably *am*
over-reacting, but it seems like they never let you rest. The end of
the Shadow War came, and folks said, "Oh, the arc is over now, nothing
interesting can happen now," and I said there was MORE interesting
stuff even than that coming up, and sure enough that happened, and it's
"Oh...okay," and this happens time and time again, and now we have a
fifth year, and it's "Oh, the arc is over, nothing interesting can
happen now."

jms

Luigi Thirty posted:

lol about that

Heresiarch posted:

It's possible to have good writing in games, it's just hard to find people who can do it right, because most of them seem to be trying to write movie screenplays instead. It's a completely different thing.

I just finished Bastion and the writing in it is pretty awesome. I'm doing a New Game+ and there's lots of little things in the narration that I'm picking up on now that I didn't get the first time through.

Also if you haven't played Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery then you really need to fix that. (You have about two days left.)

law abiding rapist posted:

more show creators should post on usenet

that awful man posted:

the only writing video games need is a bunch of one-liners cribbed from "evil dead 2" and "they live"

and maybe something about ripping an alien's head off and making GBS threads down its neck

Amethyst posted:

Games with good writing:
-Portal
-Lucasarts adventures

midnightclimax posted:

what about infocom

Amethyst posted:

I almost class interactive fiction in a different category to other games, really.

fork bomb posted:

Raymond Chandler owns so loving much

his Philip Marlow novels are some of my favorite reading, the character is such a sarcastic badass. everyone should check them out

Chillbro Swaggins posted:

yo idk if anyone posted this for you nerds yet

http://blog.psprint.com/printing/top-10-throwback-sci-fi-posters/

Vivec posted:

I watched prometheus and holy gently caress ridley scott what the hell?????

Heresiarch posted:

It's possible to have good writing in games, it's just hard to find people who can do it right, because most of them seem to be trying to write movie screenplays instead. It's a completely different thing.

I just finished Bastion and the writing in it is pretty awesome. I'm doing a New Game+ and there's lots of little things in the narration that I'm picking up on now that I didn't get the first time through.

Also if you haven't played Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery then you really need to fix that. (You have about two days left.)

Heresiarch posted:

It's possible to have good writing in games, it's just hard to find people who can do it right, because most of them seem to be trying to write movie screenplays instead. It's a completely different thing.

I just finished Bastion and the writing in it is pretty awesome. I'm doing a New Game+ and there's lots of little things in the narration that I'm picking up on now that I didn't get the first time through.

Also if you haven't played Superbrothers' Sword and Sworcery then you really need to fix that. (You have about two days left.)

ahhh spiders posted:

yeah i agree, especially with the part where it always seems like they want to make a movie, instead of a game. they want to show you their little story and sacrifice player agency nonstop to do it. it blows

Shaggar posted:

portal 2 was way 2 easy

toby posted:

that's twice in one day

Amethyst posted:

Games with good writing:
-Portal
-Lucasarts adventures
-Marathon

Shaggar posted:

portal 2 was way 2 easy

Amethyst posted:

Games with good writing:
-Portal
-Lucasarts adventures

dur posted:

Heresiarch posted:

The only good writing in the Halo games are the bits they basically recycled from the Marathon storylines.

I wonder who at Bungie was responsible for them

quote:

In the Marathon manual Greg Kirkpatrick and Colin Brent are credited for the Story but in the game itself only Greg Kirkpatrick is credited. I had the opportunity some time ago to ask Greg (GK) why Colin Brent was credited in the manual but not in the game:
HS: In the Marathon manual Colin Brent and yourself are credited for the story but in the game itself the credit screen has only you. Was there a reason for this and how much did Colin contribute to the story?
GK: Colin Brent came up with the Marathon premise: a colony ship travels to a new planet. I think the name "Marathon" was his addition as well, but I'm not sure.

What happened to Colin Brent in those early days of Marathon development? Well according to Jason Jones:

"...he had better things to do, like get married, move to the east coast and go to grad school"
The Marathon Scrapbook provides additional information from early 1994:

In February, Greg Kirkpatrick joined the Bungie team. Greg had beta-tested Pathways Into Darkness after befriending Jason at school. Several months earlier Jason had declared that if Marathon was going to have a story, Greg would have to write it.
In Marathon 2 both Jason Jones and Greg Kirkpatrick are credited for writing the Story both in the manual and in the game itself.

The Marathon Infinity scenario "Blood Tides of Lh'owon" was created by Greg Kirkpatrick's game company Double Aught. While no one is explicitly credited for the story Chris Geisel, Greg Kirkpatrick, and Randy Reddig are credited for the scenario.

Shaggar posted:

portal 2 was way 2 easy